How to Give Constructive Feedback

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman have administered thousands of 360-degree assessments through their consulting firm, Zenger/Folkman. This has given them a wealth of information about who benefits from criticism, and how to deliver it.

Today I’m talking with Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman. They are the CEO and president of Zenger Folkman a leadership development consultancy. They’re both regular contributors to HBR and to HBR.org. Joe and Jack, thank you so much for joining us today.

JACK ZENGER: Most welcome. Thanks for having us, Sarah.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So I thought before we just dive into today’s conversation on feedback, I wanted you to talk a little bit about your approach to figuring out what leaders ought to do, because it’s very data driven. And it’s a little bit different than a lot of leadership advice that is out there.

So Joe, let’s just start with you. I thought maybe you could just give us a sense of your approach to sorting through your database, and sort of how you use the data to come up with advice.

JOSEPH FOLKMAN: Well, you know, Sarah, it’s a great question, because I read a lot of blogs. People talk about– I was sitting at my kitchen table this morning, and I had this profound thought. And then they write about that. And what we’ve found is that there’s an awful lot of leadership research based on, I had this thought.

And what we wanted to do was write a blog based on data. And we’re lucky in that we have hundreds of thousands of assessments that we’re doing. And we have a database. And what we’ve tried to do is look at those databases and ask questions. And really try to get our answers to those questions out of the data, instead of I had this thought.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Yes, exactly. And that’s sort of what I like about your writing. And your characterization of the beginning of many of personal pieces of writing is very appropriate. I see that lead a lot, and I always cut it out–

[LAUGHTER]

–of the stuff that I’m editing. So I thought we could just start with what many people find the thorniest aspect of feedback, which is critical feedback. This seems like something that all managers just for the most part really hate to have to do. And there may not be a way to make it necessarily more pleasant. But is there a way to do it at least better than we usually do? Jack, what do you think?

JACK ZENGER: Well, there most certainly is a way to do it better than that we usually do. And I think it involves having some fundamental objectives that you’re trying to accomplish in that feedback or in that discussion. It helps to have some underlying kind of principles and philosophies. It also helps very much to have a plan, have a track to follow.

And then, finally, I think it really helps if you’ve practiced it or rehearsed it with a friend, or a partner, or somebody from HR. You always get better at things that you’ve practice. And so, particularly when you’re giving somebody as you’re calling it critical or redirecting corrective feedback, that’s especially important that you do it then.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well and it’s interesting too, how you then, you framed it there as corrective feedback, not critical feedback.

JACK ZENGER: Yeah, you know it’s interesting. So what’s tricky when you talk about feedback as being either negative or positive is that in a funny kind of way, for a lot of people, the most beneficial feedback, and therefore, in some ways the most positive, is corrective suggestions. It’s kind of redirecting feedback.

And for many people, the most negative feedback is just the attaboy praise, a kind of hollow compliment, which many people perceive as disingenuous and not really being serious. So we try to use the term redirecting feedback as really a way to describe ideas that you’re presenting to somebody else about something they’re not doing very well, or something that they need to start doing, or something that they’re not handling quite the right way.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: And Joe, I thought one of the findings that you wrote about together on this topic that was really interesting was that the more experienced and skilled someone is, the more they say they want that critical or corrective feedback. What do you think is going on there?

JOSEPH FOLKMAN: I think all of us have a little fear in the back of our minds. And the fear is– I call it the toilet paper hanging out of the back your pants fear– that there’s something you’re doing, and it’s a stupid thing you’re doing, and nobody’s telling you. Right?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Ah, ah, yes.

JOSEPH FOLKMAN: And it’s that mistake. And they fear that mistake. And I think that’s why they want to know.

I mean, if you ask people their preference, would you rather have your manager tell you something that you’re doing wrong or praise you for what you’re doing right? They’re always on the negative side of that. It’s like, oh, I want to know what I’m doing wrong. And I think it’s that fear that really generates that response.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So it’s interesting, because I wonder how the reality of how people react compares to what they say they want in a case like that. Because in a case like that, maybe they say they want the critical feedback, but in reality what they want is to be reassured that they’re not doing the wrong thing, they don’t have the spinach stuck in their teeth or whatever it is.

And I wonder when people do get defensive about critical feedback, what is it? Is it that the feedback was clumsily delivered? Is it that they sort of want to know, but at the same time it’s hard to hear? What’s going on when someone gets really offensive with critical feedback? Jack, maybe we’ll go back to you for this one.

JACK ZENGER: Yeah, I think that you’ve pointed out, it’s a tricky kind of balance, because on the one hand, people want to know information about how they can perform more effectively and be better. But they want it delivered it in such a way that it’s not harmful to them, it doesn’t frighten them.

When someone in authority asks you to come in to his or her office, there’s always this whole series of potential scenarios that a person can conceive of. Oh, my goodness. Am I going to lose my value to the organization? Is my future in jeopardy? Is my independence going to be in question? All these fundamental human needs are potentially kind of at risk.

And so if the message can be delivered by the manager in such a way that he or she kind of puts it in proper perspective. And if it’s trivial, they know it’s going to be kind of controversial. If it’s titanic, they know it’s going to be, oh, this is going to be a serious conversation.

But when you go to a movie and something traumatic is going to happen, the music kind of plays a little bit. You’re alerted to that. What often doesn’t happen, I think, in a business context, is there’s no music. The manager doesn’t set the stage that hey, look, I just want to pass on an idea to you. No big deal. Drop in my office, I want to share some thoughts with you. Versus I need to have a very serious conversation with you about some things happening in your role.

And so, I think if we can put it in perspective and kind of set the stage for it, if it doesn’t come as a big surprise, if it comes in small doses, then I think it goes down much, much more effectively.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: And it sound like what really is needed are sort of regular conversations there. Not just to sort of only meet when there’s a problem, but to have an regular cadence of meetings.

JACK ZENGER: Well, exactly. And as you said, if the manager will have frequent meetings, and if the great bulk of those meetings are constructive ideas, positive reinforcement, then when the time comes that the manager wants to pass on some kind of corrective kind of feedback, then it’s no big deal. But if this only happens once every six months or once a year, then it is a big deal.

JOSEPH FOLKMAN: It is interesting, Sarah, because I think most of the time when you have some feedback to give, you imagine to yourself, I need to tell them, because they don’t understand. They don’t know about this problem. When we ask people how often is feedback a surprise, 73% said it isn’t.

[LAUGHTER]

I already know it. And so, I think that one of the things we do is we imagine, well, gosh, if they knew this, they wouldn’t do it. Well, they do know it.

And they also have a way, a plan for how they could correct for it. The problem is you walk in and you’re really upset, and you say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They already knew it.

And then you say, here’s what you need to do about it. And that’s exactly the opposite of what you ought to do. You ought to bring up the issue. Have them describe it. Have them talk about it. And then ask them what they ought to do about it, because you’ll find people come up with a better plan and a more comprehensive plan than you would have.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So I’m wondering also about the value of giving feedback in public versus private, because we’ve published a lot of dissenting views on this on HBR.org over the years. And often people will say, well, you have to praise in public and criticize in private. But are there times when you really should have a critical conversation in a group setting? And how can people do that well if that’s what’s called for?

JACK ZENGER: I think there’s great value when people are given positive reinforcement in public. And I think the more that that can happen, the stronger people see that people are appreciated and that there’s gratitude for what they’re doing. I can’t think of very many occasions when it would be appropriate to criticize some individual in public. I can’t even imagine the scenario that would have that be the best avenue.

A manager may want to address some general problem that’s happening that influences several people. But if it’s really only one individual that’s involved or responsible, I can’t imagine a time that would have that be made a public discussion. Because again, it’s one thing to have the manager talk with you privately and have all these human needs begin to surface, but now if it’s public, now it takes on a whole greater crescendo of importance and meaning. And my status is really now being questioned in front of a whole group.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Yeah, it seems like it would just be hard to get through this sort of toxic potential, potential for turning the conversation toxic. I do wonder if an entire team has sort of fallen short of a goal and that the purpose is to kind of have a conversation about– like a postmortem of some kind. Is that sort of the equivalent? Or is that something where you sort of need to talk to people one on one and then come back together with the group to talk about what to do next?

JOSEPH FOLKMAN: I was thinking that in a lot of circumstances, perhaps a mistake is made in the group by an individual. But when you really look at it, when you really examine it, the whole team was involved. I mean there was advice given, there was set up, there was support, and sort of lots of players were involved. And sometimes those discussions, I think, can be beneficial in a group.

JACK ZENGER: Yeah, you know the military has pioneered a concept called after action reviews, where after a mission, people all come back. They get in a room. They kind of symbolically take off their stripes. And they have this conversation about, OK, so what did we hope would happen? What really happened? What made the difference?

But what there is about that whole discussion is that there’s never a finger pointing, who’s at fault, who made a mistake. But it’s really what can we learn? How would we do it differently next time? How can we use this as a learning experience? And I think as long as that’s the tone of the conversation, then I think a group conversation is very appropriate.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What about totally different scenario now. I’m pivoting to a sort of different scenario where– we’ve been talking a lot about defensiveness. And it sort of occurred to me as we were wrapping up our conversation on the after action review idea. What if the feedback is totally baseless? What if you were the person then receiving the feedback, and you’re not being defensive. It just literally, you’re like this isn’t fair. What can someone in that situation do?

JACK ZENGER: Well, I think the first thing is to really try to understand. And lots of times feedback is emotion coming through. The feedback that you get is based on somebody’s negative feelings, or frustration, or anger, or something like that. And occasionally, when we do our 360 feedback with leaders, they get some of that. They get people sort of like lashing out. And you go, what’s going on there? I mean, I don’t do that at all. And it’s like people are sort of trying to make up for it.

And typically, if I talk to people and I say, well what did you learn from that? And they go, nothing. And I go, well, you did learn something. You learned that somebody is really upset.

[LAUGHTER]

That’s about all you can get out of it. But somebody’s really upset. And so maybe if you can just not worry so much about the truth or not the error of the feedback, but more what’s the learning there, I think you can respond to it appropriately.

JOSEPH FOLKMAN: I think the second thing that can happen, Sarah, is that the recipient can do his or her very best to not get upset and excited, but to really ask a series of questions upon what do you base this? What’s the data? I’d like to understand it better.

And as long as you can kind of try to get to the heart of how did this idea come to you? What’s the evidence that you have for it? A, you may find out that there is some substance to it. Or B, you can help the manager to discover, oh, maybe there wasn’t any substance to this. And let me present you the other side of the story.

But I think if the subordinate, in this case, would simply ask questions, not get upset. And then just say to the manager, would you like to hear the other side of the story? Then I think it can end up being a positive experience, rather than just a horribly negative experience.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s a good point. Yeah, and it’s funny what we’re sort of really getting to here is the power differential between different people. And I know the people that you guys have assessed and helped over the years come from different levels in the organization. And I’m wondering if when you are looking at the data and looking at these 360 degree assessments, if you see any differences sort of between the people at the top and the people that are managers but not all the way at the very top and kind of how they respond to feedback? Or at how they give feedback?

It’s a little bit of a fishing expedition type question. But I’m just wondering when you look at the power differentials between people, do the people with more power behave differently? I’m just sort of curious.

JOSEPH FOLKMAN: It was an interesting situation that a president of an organization became the CEO. And after he was given the CEO spot, he thought about his direct reports. They were all incredibly competent. And he said, you know what, they don’t need a lot of feedback from me. And so he did what we encourage people to do when they get a new job, is he did a 360.

And the feedback he got is, we need feedback.

[CHUCKLING]

And he thought, well, you know, you’re all really competent people. But they said, we want to know what you think. We want to know what’s going on. And we want an evaluation of our performance.

And I think that was a valuable lesson for him in terms of people continually want that feedback. They want to know where they stand and how they’re doing. And he needed to give it on a regular basis.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s a really good point. And I think that one of the other things is I’m sort of realizing now that we’re almost out of time. And we’ve talked almost this whole time about negative feedback or corrective feedback. But I don’t want to sort of let you guys go without asking a little bit about praise. I know most people also would like more praise, probably, I’m assuming.

But there is a lot of people for whom praise is difficult to hear. It sort of gets into some kind of imposter syndrome. They start feeling like the praise isn’t deserved. And they sort of discount it.

If praise is sort of hard to hear, or people have a hard time accepting that that’s true, any advice out there either for those people or for their managers?

JACK ZENGER: I think what’s hard about praise is that sometimes managers feel that for me to praise you, in a way, automatically sets me up as being your superior. And that we’re now at different levels. And therefore, if I either praise you or if I quote criticize you, it’s kind of one in the same thing. I’m setting myself above you.

But what they don’t realize is what Joe just got through talking about, which is people really do want to have more information about how they are performing, so long as it is delivered in a constructive and helpful way. My view is that the key to providing reinforcing feedback is to make it very specific, and to tell people what specifically you appreciated, and to make it very specific about what impact it has had on the performance of the organization or on the performance of the group.

I think what people don’t like about praise is it’s just a general. And therefore, it seems kind of disingenuous, and kind of you’re just blowing smoke at me. And it’s not really meaningful.

I think if it comes across as being thought through, and if you really are trying to convey a specific and an important message, then I think people really do appreciate it.

JOSEPH FOLKMAN: We ask a question of people. We said, what’s been most helpful for you in your career? Has it been some corrective feedback? Or has it been praise and recognition?

What’s interesting about that question is the world is divided almost equally on that question. About 47% of the population said it was corrective. 53% said it was praise and recognition.

And people work out of that scenario. So what you find is that people that say what’s been helpful for me is corrective, they tend to be more corrective oriented. And people that said no, it’s praise, they tend to be more praised oriented. What we think is helpful is both.

[LAUGHTER]

And whichever side of the equation you’re on there, work both sides. It’s like you’re only using half of the power of this feedback if you only praise or only are corrective. And so do both.

Like Jack says, be specific on the recognition. And let people know when they’re doing a good job. Nobody says they need it, they want it, they feel weak when they do. But everybody appreciates it secretly.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well I think that’s a really wonderful note to end on. Gentlemen, thank you so much for talking with us today.

JOSEPH FOLKMAN: Well, you’re welcome.

JACK ZENGER: Been our pleasure.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That was Joe Folkman and Jack Zenger. They are the CEO and president of Zenger Folkman. For more from them, go to HBR.org.